May 2009 – Page 2

Actually, comparing Sonia Sotomayor to Sarah Palin is kind of insulting

I’m the last person who is going to stand up for the media’s crappy treatment of Sarah Palin during the Presidential elections, but I do think intelligence and achievement are fair issues to bring up when considering an elected official or a Supreme Court justice. And while I don’t think Sarah Palin is dumb, do think it was pretty clear that she did not know the necessary basics to fulfill the role of Vice President (I also think it’s pretty clear that Bush didn’t know the necessary basics to fulfill the role of President).

It’s ridiculous to compare someone like Sarah Palin to someone like Sonia Sotomayor. Yes, they have both endured sexist attacks. But suggesting that they’re being attacked in the same unfair way? No. It’s a little more complicated than “Sarah and Sonia are both being called dumb.” The reality is that Sarah Palin was a governor with very limited political experience who sold her candidacy on her “values” and attacked intellectualism as “elitism.” Sonia Sotomayor has more experience than nearly any other current member of the Supreme Court at the time of their appointment. She got into Princeton by the sheer force of her hard work and intelligence — not an achievement that many (or even most) college students can claim. She graduated at the top of her class, and went on to Yale Law, where she was an editor of the Law Journal. She was appointed to the federal district court by George HW Bush, and then to the Second Circuit by Bill Clinton, where she penned hundreds of opinions and heard thousands of cases.

It’s a slap in the face to mention her name in the same sentence as Sarah Palin, let alone argue that the two women are intellectual equals. I have no desire to discuss Palin’s intelligence or to bring her down, but I’m confused as to why we’re bothering to bring her up here.

Add into that the fact that Sotomayor isn’t being attacked just on gender lines — the right-wing assault on her has been deeply racist. The argument that she’s “stupid” is both gendered and racialized — no white man with her legal pedigree would be called “stupid,” but you can bet that a man of color would.

She’s not being “Palin-ed.” She’s being subjected to racist, sexist attacks. We can address and respond to those on the merits without bringing Sarah Palin into it.

Maricopa County Allegedly Fails to Investigate Sexual Assault Cases

I’m going to go ahead and assume that by now, most of you recognize the name Sheriff Joseph Arpaio. You know, the sheriff of Maricopa county — “America’s Toughest Sheriff” — who is famous for prisoner abuse, particularly against undocumented immigrants, has a long list of inmate deaths and injuries, and is currently under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department?

Well, Arpaio is indeed really, really “tough” . . . unless we’re talking about sexual assault, of course. Allegations have recently been made that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office isn’t properly investigating sexual assault cases:

The Goldwater Institute could not say how many cases other law enforcement agencies clear by exception- one of the main reasons the institute is pushing for legislation that would require investigators to designate that data.

The Sheriff’s Office appears to be the worst offender, Bolick said, because the sheriff’s clearance rate on cases is higher than most other agencies.

Sheriff’s officials point to those statistics as evidence of quality police work, but Bolick said it could easily be the result of clearing too many cases through exception instead of arrest.

“We can’t say, no one can say, what the reality of the situation is,” he said.

In 2008, the Sheriff’s Office reported to county officials that about 1,300 of 9,500 cases investigated, or about 14 percent, were cleared with arrests. The same report shows that detectives cleared a total of about 7,200 cases. That would mean a large majority of cleared cases were from one of several other ways, including the case was unfounded or was given an “exceptional clearance.”

The FBI’s standards for clearing cases through exception state that the investigation should have: established the identity of a suspect; gathered enough information to support an arrest, charge and review from prosecutors; determined the exact location of the suspect; and cited a reason outside investigators control that would prevent arrest and prosecution.

In another article, Bolick says that one such reason that could prevent arrest and prosecution is “because the suspect is dead or is currently incarcerated and can not be extradited.” Surely, given all of the standards above, I imagine that you would be just as eager as I am to see how exactly they managed to clear about 75% of their cases through such means. Especially when they have documented instances where such a method of clearing the case was seemingly incredibly improper.

It’s also worth noting that, confusingly enough, the Goldwater Institute is not a civil liberties group or victim’s advocacy organization. They’re a conservative think tank. Which means I would normally ignore whatever they have to say. So I’m left here scratching my head at the idea that “tough on crime,” anti-immigrants conservatives who generally give Arpaio hero-like status would be going after his office with such allegations. It really makes me wonder just how bad exactly things are. Because while I may simply be unimaginative, if there’s an ulterior motive out there, I’m not seeing it at the moment.

But I do know that there is very little I put past Joe Arpaio and his office. And I know that Arpaio actually cares very little about crime, and cares a whole lot more about racist means of law enforcement and grandstanding for the media. So would I be surprised to learn that his “toughness” only extends to locking up and abusing immigrants who just needed a job, and falls short on prosecuting rapists? No. Rather, I’d expect it.

The Survivor Mural Project

I have just learned of a great project going on called the Survivor Mural Project. The goal is to eventually create a patchwork mural of hundreds of works of art by sexual violence survivors to travel and serve as a reminder of the impact of sexual violence.

From the site:

We believe that collaborating with many survivors from all around the world will provide a powerful visual reminder of the staggering statistics and the devastating impact that sexual violence can have on people’s lives.

Participants can choose to remain anonymous. You do NOT need to be an artist! This is your opportunity to be heard, and to offer inspiration and hope to others.

At this stage there is no deadline for mural piece submissions.

All survivors of any form of sexual violence are welcome and encouraged to submit. Judging from those pieces already in the gallery, the statement that contributors need not be artists seems very genuine — while many are visually stunning, others resemble PostSecret postcards, and are made up largely of text. It’s really amazing seeing so many different survivor viewpoints and experiences being collected all in one place, and I can’t wait to see the finished product.

Check out the site for details on how to participate, and spread the word. I imagine that this will be a truly stunning work of art and activism once it is completed.

h/t Marcella’s Twitter

Higher Ground, Not Common Ground

by Merle Hoffman in On the Issues Magazine.

As a person who feels that war should be the strategy of last resort, I still like to read military history. I find myself going back to the wisdom of Sun Tzu who wrote in “The Art of War” in the 6th century BC: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”

As feminists who fight battles against those who would deny women’s freedom and equality, we know the mettle of our enemies. They are relentless, committed beyond secular principles, willing to look at things in the very long term, absolutely sure of their righteousness and totally determined.

They have one solid line, which they define and defend. Those who stand on their side are with the angels; those who stand on the other are misguided, at best, and sinners, at worst.

One battle or many do not determine who will ultimately triumph in any war. From the civil war in the U.S., the suffragist struggle for the vote, the ongoing battle for reproductive rights and all other revolutionary movements in the world, history shows that nothing is achieved once and for all.

Movements are not static, formal things — freedom and justice are generational struggles that are passed down and through the ages. The movement for women’s liberation is a Protean force that contracts, expands and expresses itself, directly and, at times, in camouflage, depending on the current theater of struggle.

The strength of the movement is that it can shape-shift—situationally compromise, accept new technologies, ways of communicating and influence– all in service of a vision. The vision itself remains universal — beyond cultures and national boundaries.

Feminists may need to practice realpolitik to get the “least bad” candidate elected and the needed bills vetoed or passed. The ideologist asks the question: “Is it good for women?” The politician asks: “Is this the best we can do for women now?” The visionary holds to a higher standard, and takes the longer view.

Because strategies and tactics change in response to the political and historical moment, those who view feminism’s existence purely in terms of realpolitik sometimes wonder if the movement still exists – and, if so, to what end.

For instance, the present public discussion of the need for “common ground” in the abortion debate is a reflection of the Obama Administration’s attempted conciliation or reconciliation between adversarial parties. So far, the discussion has talked about reducing the need for abortion.
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Read the rest here.

Why Do You Speak?

SPEAK! by the SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective
(Liquid Words Productions)

When I first listened to SPEAK!, the spoken word collection put out by the SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective, I shied away from reviewing it. I was too biased, I worried. I couldn’t be objective. Some of the contributors read (and have written for) this very blog! It was fairer, I decided, to review works by people I’d never met or spoken to.

Blah blah blah. Fuck that. This collection is wonderful.

“I speak to live into my skin… I scream for my family, for my life, for your life, and for the ones to come,” says Adele Nieves in the CD’s opening track, “Why Do You Speak?” She sets the tone for the entire collection, tying personal histories to entire nations, connecting people to peoples. These voices whisper, yell, sing, rhyme, ponder, call, muse (think of the double meaning of the word “muse” – think of a muse channeling her inspiration through her own voice instead of silently bestowing it on someone else). There are so many great moments that it’s hard to figure out which ones to highlight.

Aaminah Hernandez’s piece, “When I Speak,” was one of my favorites. It begins with a telephone ringing and the beep of an answering machine. From the format, one might expect a sort of epistolary piece, but in a striking move Hernandez seems, at first, to address no one in particular. She ruminates on those who seek out Muslim perspectives, but panic when a Muslim woman – or, even more frightening, a Muslim woman without a college degree, or a Muslim mother – opens her mouth. “Surviving isn’t education… and being well-read only matters if it was guided by professors and resulted in something to frame,” she says, her voice measured almost to the point of monotone. The format is slyly appropriate for the subject Hernandez is tackling; one gets the sense that after being shut out of mainstream discourse, she’s entering it through the back door. But who is she speaking to? Whose answering machine is this? Perhaps she’s speaking past her listener, just as other speakers have done to her. Both her and Lisa Factora-Borchers’s criticisms of academia are incisive – why, their pieces ask, do you need a degree to talk about your own experience, your own truths? Why are you a sought-after commodity if you have culturally-sanctioned credentials, and a voice on an answering machine if you don’t?

Nadia Abou-Karr contributes two pieces on the Palestinian experience, “We Will Never Forget” and “Genocide.” In the second piece, she explores the role of the US mainstream in appropriating, repackaging, and mass producing the Holocaust as a tragedy like no other in the history of the world – in other words, the only “real” genocide. I was of two minds as I listened. On the one hand, I thought of the rage I felt at hearing John McCain and Sarah Palin chirp, “We don’t want another Holocaust!” in order to win an election – as if they gave even the tiniest damn about the members of my family who were disappeared after Germany invaded Poland. On the other hand, I couldn’t escape the visceral suspicion and discomfort I feel when any non-Jew appears to suggest that we talk about the Holocaust too much, or in the wrong way. I could feel myself bristling – but healthy bristling will happen when raw subjects are discussed frankly. And even that discomfort is minor when you consider the main point of the piece: that if we agree that each group has the most expertise on their own oppression, then Palestinians need to be able to use the term “genocide” to describe the ongoing erasure of their culture, land, and lives. (Think of this idea in relation to Hernandez and Factora-Borchers’ critiques of credentials and degrees. One of the main themes running through this collection, whether it’s Palestine or privileged feminism or the Song of Solomon, is the subversion of hierarchies and the questioning of accepted narratives. The Israeli government knows what it’s talking about; Palestinian civilians don’t. Academics and men and white people know what they’re talking about; everyone else does not. Meanwhile, the people who supposedly don’t know what they’re talking about are living and hurting and dying.)

Most of the pieces rely on minimal sounds – light percussion, synthesizers, background noise – if there’s any sound besides the speaker at all, so E. Rose Sims’ “On Cartography and Dissection” is a jarring change of pace, with an orchestrated score that matches the dark tone of her exploration of monsters. The piece is a brilliant series of connections between colonialism and transphobia and racism, with mapmaking serving as a metaphor for the naming and conquering of the human body. Flags are planted, already-established realities are ignored, and healthy, natural identities are twisted, by colonizers, into “a wrongness, a distortion.” Sims’s voice brims with sadness and anger as thunder crackles behind her and she ponders what Medusa felt the first time she saw her own reflection.

There are delightful moments of humor in the collection, too. BabyBFP, giggling, reads a poem about her cats, and the CD begins to draw to a close with a spirited rendition of “I Feel Pretty.” When I saw the title on the track listing, I was afraid it would be corny, but these ladies pull it off.

“What is this thing called ‘love’? And what does it mean to radicalize it?” BFP asks at Flip Flopping Joy. The idea of radical love is, as usual, being appropriated and twisted beyond recognition by mainstream “movements,” but SPEAK! is – I think? I feel? I’m new at this and the term resists definition – a work built from real radical love. It’s beyond the romantic or the superficial. “We don’t get to say, ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ – we say, ‘I am woman, dear God, I hope you find my sister today,'” Black Amazon says in “Something Else to Be.” In many ways, it’s beyond analysis.

Oh! And if you need any more evidence that you should procure a copy of this CD, all proceeds go towards helping single mothers attend the Allied Media Conference in Detroit this July. Listening parties, workshops, and a zine are options available to you.

So get it already! Get this CD posthaste. Listen, learn, and love.

ETA: Looks like Cara and I posted about this at the same time!

Help Send Single Mothers to the Allied Media Conference

The Allied Media Conference, which is about “[sharing] tools and tactics for transforming our communities through media-based organizing,” is being held this July. I’ve never been, but I know that it’s a really important event to a whole lot of womanists, feminists and radical women of color.

And I’ve just learned through BFP’s blog that the AMC needs a lot of money to help ensure that single mothers, who so often get left out of conference events, will be able to attend and participate. She writes:

Why do we need single mamis at this conference?

It’s funny you should ask. Mamis of color are leaders in creating media that services the communities most in need radical media justice. They’ve created zines, blog communities, news papers, radio shows. They write and speak with children on their hips, on their breasts, and with the most limited resources possible. They can make a meeting happen with three people in three different cities, one car, and an awesome white dude. They don’t leave their neighbors behind because it’s a car with four seats, they make more seats in the car.

This is leadership. Single mamis of color are the leaders of the media justice movement, and I really am not sure why or how we would have a conference if they weren’t there.

So they need your help getting these women there in July. Click here to contribute by buying a SPEAK! CD. The CD itself includes all kinds of amazing stuff. And the suggested donation amount is $12, but you can also choose to donate more than that — as much as your heart desires and your wallet will allow.

Go, now, donate! And then put the call out on your blog, your twitter, facebook, whatever it is you use, and get the people you know to do the same.

cross-posted at the Curvature

Weighing Sotomayor’s Opinions

I have a piece up in RH Reality Check today about Sotomayor’s various legal opinions, including her one reproductive-rights-related decision (which has a conclusion that none of us are going to like). A teaser:

Sotomayor would not have been my first choice, primarily because my political leanings are far to the left of her legal theory. But I’ll be supporting her whole-heartedly. Her trail of opinions paints a picture of a fair-minded, incisive legal scholar who is unafraid to stake out unpopular but legally meritorious positions. Right-wingers are going to oppose her nomination with full force – we would be foolish to do it for them.

Check it out.

Sotomayor, identity and experience

I have a piece up in the Guardian about how identity and experience shape the courts, and how Sotomayor’s professional and personal experiences add a necessary diversity to the Supreme Court bench. A taste:

Republicans and conservatives will argue that [Sotomayor’s] nomination is an exercise in affirmative action, and that Barack Obama has effectively posted a “White males need not apply” sign on the doors of the supreme court – a funny complaint about an institution that is almost entirely white and male. Democrats and liberals will predictably trip over themselves arguing that Sotomayor’s race and gender don’t matter, even while race and gender matter.

The reality, of course, is that every supreme court justice comes in with a set of life experiences that are shaped not only by race and gender, but by experiences both professional and personal – it’s just that few people consider that whiteness and maleness are not neutral identities and may shape one’s perspectives and legal opinions just as much as femaleness or non-whiteness. Sotomayor herself has said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” And she’s right.

While that quote is sure to be brought up as evidence that she’s a “liberal activist”, it’s more indicative of the kind of self-awareness and reflection we want in a supreme court justice.

Judges have a marked historical tendency to move left over their supreme court tenures. There remains quite a bit of debate over why there’s such a pronounced liberal shift, and it is no doubt a complex phenomenon. But I suspect it has to do in part with a slow realisation that the law has a real impact on peoples’ lives, and that the law school classroom model of the law as a near-science and justice as consistency is fundamentally flawed and entirely unrealistic. “The law” as an academic exercise is certainly interesting, but one’s view is bound to shift when, as supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy put it, “suddenly, there’s a real person there.”

I think Holly and I were on the same wavelength (I was writing this article while she was writing her post) when it comes to “identity politics” and Sotomayor, so if for some strange reason you haven’t read her post below, you should do it. She fleshes out the idea more thoroughly than I did in my article (oh, to have a brain like Holly…). Enjoy.

Prop 8 Upheld: Protests Tonight

As I’m sure you’ve all undoubtedly heard by this point, California’s Supreme Court ruled to upheld Prop 8, which bans same-sex marriage in the state. They have, however, ruled that the 18,000 couples who were married during the period when it was legal before Prop 8’s passage will remain married.

I’m not surprised, honestly. But I am incredibly sad, and angry. It’s the worst, most cowardly “compromise” ever. And I’m very, very sorry to all of those living in California who will be affected by this ruling.

I don’t really have much of anything to add to the discussion at all, and haven’t had the chance to read much — so if you’ve been reading some interesting takes on this leave them in the comments. Instead, I’m writing to notify everyone that there are protests taking place tonight in over 100 cities in opposition to the ruling and in support of equal rights.

Check out if your city is holding a protest here, and if you are able to attend, do.

Sonia Sotomayor nominated for the Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor

This morning, Obama announced his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The nomination’s notable for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Sotomayor would be the first Latin@ to sit on the high bench, the first woman of color — and only the third woman, after O’Connor and Ginsburg. Sotomayor grew up in the housing projects of the South Bronx, was raised by a single mother after the death of her father, is a diabetic, a Catholic, and is divorced with no children. Obama described her life as an “extraordinary journey,” talking about how she graduated at the top of her class from Princeton and then Yale Law School.

You might be wondering why I rattled off a laundry list of her life experiences, or what you might call identity categories. Two reasons: first, her career has been batted around for years by feuding Democrats and Republicans because she’s a woman of color. Once she made the short list for an Obama nomination, the rumors and sniping started up again. What she doesn’t have any kids? Not only that, but some people think she’s fat. Or are even spuriously linking her weight to her diabetes.

Get ready for a whole season of this kind of thing as her nomination is challenged. And it surely will be, in part because Sotomayor herself finds that (shockingly!) her own life experiences may lend her particular kinds of wisdom and insight. I rather agree with this quote of hers, and it’s already become a lightning-rod for conservative criticism:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.